Obama & WH Press; Love Hurts

Obama treats the press with arrogant contempt—and you can’t say they haven’t earned it by their fawning shilling for him in the past. For someone like Obama, that sort of adulation breeds an increase in condescension; he knows he can abuse them with impunity. And so he does, when he thinks it suits his purposes.

Obama’s last lingering need to cooperate with the press or to treat them with any sort of respect ended when he was elected and ascended to the powerful post of POTUS. Now, the more they try to please him, the more he realizes he has nothing to fear from them, and the more they realize they have something to fear from him.

It reminds me a little of that scene in Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, when Ferris opines that Cameron will marry the first girl who has sex with him, but “She won’t respect him,” Ferris says, “’cause you can’t respect somebody who kisses your ass. It just doesn’t work.”

Neo continues:

[The WH Press Corps] still do not quite seem to understand who and what they’re dealing with. Their surprise seems unfeigned to me, which is a surprise in and of itself. It appears that they didn’t just cover up all the evidence—available during the campaign to anyone willing to look—that their man was a thinskinned, rude, arrogant, bully. They actually denied it, repressing their knowledge of and/or excusing such behavior, so strong was their need to believe in Obama.

And insight dawns slowly, very slowly, if at all. The press remains shell shocked. Love is a funny thing, and hope dies hard when one is blinded by it.

I’ve seen a few comments that the press might “turn” on Obama. I doubt it. The press needs an intervention – a few people to force them to confront this sick relationship. Lacking that, they will continue as they are.

They’re griping because their feelings are a little hurt, but the press knows that – ideologically – they are all on the same page with Obama; they understand that he will put into effect the policies they desire.

So, they embody the sick delusion: “my boyfriend smacks me around, but then he buys me this fur coat! We can work it out, I know we can!”

All Obama has to do is crook his little finger and smile at them and they’ll come running back, like a battered wife who apologizes for “forcing” her husband to kick her and then hurries off to make him a steak dinner and Crepes Suzette.